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Why another pension - why not pay more into your employer's scheme? Check if they will pay more if you pay more; even if they don't, if the charges are comparable to other pension schemes, there seems little need to complicate things by collecting pension schemes for the sake of it.

Presume you mean you have a one-off lump sum of £5K to invest, not £5K per month (happy thought!). Before tying it up in a pension, do you have an adequate rainy day fund? If not, an ISA might be a better idea.

I would check out how the company pension is invested and see if you are happy with that. Are there many options to choose from if not?

Do you contribute via salary sacrifice as that gets you more bang for your buck?

Does the scheme allow you to contribute more?

Once you know these things you will be better equipped to get good suggestions.

For example I can salary sacrifice so I save on NI, DH does even better and gets employer NI too. I can change my pension contribution amount every month (and do for various reasons). I am OK with the choice of funds as I can compensate with a SIPP and ISA to get an overall portfolio that I am happy with.

ok, didn't want to bore all with life story, but guess you need more to go on. lol

have less than 3K in previous pension schemes.

have 5K disposable (and 5K rainy day money) just sat in current acct doing nothing, small family and OH is very solvent. Basically looking to better protect myself and help add to "our" future opportunities.

we own over 60% of house already.

my concerns is if i pay more into pension then that's tied up till retirement.

unfortunately don't know the full details of my new employer's pension. Have based my estimates on 12% from me and 3% from them.

You say that your OH is "very solvent" but is the £10,000 (?) you mention your only joint savings?

If so, it is really an emergency fund - if eligible, you and your OH might consider each opening a sole Nationwide Flexdirect account and a joint for a year to get 5% interest and a sole TSB Plus current account each.

You can cycle the required inputs from TSB to NW and back again.

You and your OH might also wish to consider a Flex monthly saver each.

We don't know your income or lifestyle but if at 38 you only have DC pension pot(s) of £3k you are very much behind in your retirement provision and should consider significant additional contribution to catch-up.

Again without knowing the details of your workplace pension or your proposed alternative it is hard to comment but I find it works well to make additional contributions into my workplace pension (to get employer matching, salary sacrifice, etc) and then do lump sum transfers every few years into a SIPP where I can invest with more freedom.

thanks everyone so far, i had expected to have an answer to specific pension breakdown but individual on A/L, tried to get ahead of the 8 ball and this has helped with questions for them if and when they call tomorrow.

So did I . My employer's name began with D.
I was in the company share scheme, but sold them after my job was sold. I also got some shares in my new employer, until their share scheme was stopped. I held on to them until I lost my job with them, by which time the share price had almost recovered from the dot com crash. I sold most but still have some, which have increased by 25% since I sold the others.

So did I . My employer's name began with D.
I was in the company share scheme, but sold them after my job was sold. I also got some shares in my new employer, until their share scheme was stopped. I held on to them until I lost my job with them, by which time the share price had almost recovered from the dot com crash. I sold most but still have some, which have increased by 25% since I sold the others.

I had a small amount in ShareSave scheme but always sold out when time was up. Young family, wife at home needed the money so no conscious decision around taking on too much risk associated with one company.

Some of the guy who were in their 50's then had a fortune tied up in the shares and lost heavily as it went down the pan. That, coupled with the way the pension scheme has been run over the last 15 or so years, has put them into a very different retirement scenario than they envisaged.

As others have said, you haven't given a lot of information, and at your age you are significantly behind in terms of pension savings. Some thoughts:

Get whatever you can from your employer. Some employers match your contributions up to a certain %.

Once you have maxed out what your employer will contribute, if you can still contribute more, doing so via your company pension has the advantage of saving you national insurance via salary sacrifice. If you were to invest the same money in another pension, you'd get tax relief but you wouldn't get relief on national insurance. It has the disadvantages of more limited choices and typically higher fees than you can get in a SIPP, but the NI saving may easily offset these. Also, you should be able to transfer at least part of your money away from the company scheme and into a SIPP even when you are still employed by them. Of course salary sacrifice means you commit to contributing the same every month; if you want to do one-off contributions at the end of the year, depending on how much you have spent and saved in the year, then you cannot do salary sacrifice.

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